Secret Sauce for ORANGE in a Small Church

Over the last 9 years I’ve had the awesome opportunity to connect with (conservatively) hundreds of amazing leaders. While it might come as a surprise, the majority of churches using ORANGE would actually fall into the category of “small churches”-many with less than 25 children in their ministry.

I’ve been asked dozens of times, “Will ORANGE work in a small church?” The answer is an unequivocal YES! And, I’d also say there is a bit of a “secret sauce” to small churches doing excellent ministry to kids and their families. That “secret sauce” is actually the attitude of the ministry leader. I’ve seen it again and again and heard it in the stories coming from leaders who love, embrace and are immensely passionate about the 5, 10, 15 kids they serve-and their families. These leaders refuse to settle for “well, we’re just a small church, so we can’t….” fill in the blank with whatever may apply.

You see, ORANGE is really a strategy that is all about putting a consistent leader in the life of every child in their ministry and connecting what happens at church with the home. Then, we also create a curriculum that helps make it easy for leaders-ANY leader-to make this happen in their ministry. A leader in a small church gets the same fantastic, creative curriculum as churches 4, 5, 6 or 10 times their size-AND we even scale it in our COMPACT edition to make these lesson come to life with a lead teach and an assistant. Then positive leaders who believe passionately in reaching the next generation for Christ cast vision to volunteers, church leadership, parents to help them see what can be possible for every child in their church. Their passion ignites participation. People want to jump on board to invest in the next generation because the leader has help them see what really matters-the opportunity for kids to connect with their Savior and Heavenly Father.

YOU, leaders, are the “secret sauce”. What kind of “sauce” is splashing out of your cup onto the folks around you? Do they see vision, an amazing “our ministry is awesome” attitude that is irresistible? Or is your sauce more of the “well, we’re just a small church, so we can’t…” variety? Challenge: develop a saucy “our ministry is the BEST place to be!” attitude and see how that impacts what your ministry to kids and their parents’ looks like!!

Amy Grisham loves getting the opportunity to brainstorm with leaders as they work to make their ministries fantastic places where kids learn about having a relationship with Jesus. She thinks it's so cool to see how God has wired leaders to do what He has called them to do. She also loves being a mother and wife and doing ministry as a family, as her boys, ages 11 and 13, start to come into their own and begin to see how God has wired them! She admits to being an embarrassingly rabid fan of any team her boys play on. She says, “I am definitely one of 'those' moms at the ballpark—but only because I'm the world's biggest cheerleader for my boys!”